Exploring Mentalising Tendencies Toward a Non-Humanoid Robot in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Pilot Study

This pilot study explores the tendency of people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to mentalise a non-umanoid robot. The study involved eleven children aged 7 to 10 years with ASD. A small non-humanoid robotic vehicle (CoderBot) was used. The children participated in a structured experiment involving true belief (TB) and false belief (FB) tasks. The tasks were designed to assess children’s tendency to mentalise the robot, using an adapted version of a classic Theory of Mind change-of-location paradigm, with verbal and non-verbal response modes. Results indicate that five participants used mentalistic terms referring to CoderBot in both TB and FB tasks and two participants in one of the tasks (FB and TB respectively), suggesting a mentalistic interpretation of the robot's behaviour. The terms employed fall into various categories including reference to the robot’s perceptual capacities, beliefs, cognitive capacities and states, and intentional agency. The results indicate FB attribution to CoderBot for six participants and TB attribution for four participants. The methodological insights of this study, including the integration of verbal and non-verbal responses and the helping paradigm, suggest promising methodological directions for future research.